I’ve found maybe the most fascinating, and definitely the most confusing, Little Women retelling to exist in the literary market today. Take the magic, rainbows, and friendship of My Little Pony and add Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and you get Little Fillies.
Little Fillies is the first book in the My Little Pony: Classic Reimagined series, a graphic novel series retelling classic literature using the MLP characters. This book has had a hold on me (and I, a Library hold on it) since my coworker Abbey first alerted me to its existence. I read it the day that my hold came in at lunch, regaling my coworkers with it’s happenings, and now it’s been sitting on my bookshelf at home for *checks watch* three months, and I’m just now getting around to writing a blog post about it…whoops.
I’ve been delaying writing this blog post, because on some levels, this retelling is so inexplicable to me. It’s hard to describe, it’s meta, it includes a CATS the musical reference, and it has so many layers. How to even begin.
I suppose with the premise. Rainbow Dash (Jo), Twilight Sparkle (Meg), Fluttershy (Beth), and Rarity (Amy) are standing in for the March Sisters experiencing life in Broncord, Massahoofetts and maybe dreaming of life beyond it. When Applejack (Laurie) comes to town, Rainbow Dash begins to hope for more.
Basically, the My Little Pony characters are playing Little Women, putting on a production for seemingly only themselves and the reader (which is acknowledged through numerous fourth wall breaks) with Discord, a draconequs (dragon horse? I know nothing about My Little Pony), stepping in to act as narrator and helping to keep the show running smoothly. It’s really hard to explain without reading it directly and it feels a bit like reading a fever dream.
I think this read would be best for anyone who actually understands the MLP universe because there was a lot that I was missing out on, but I want to tell you about my absolute favorite part of this graphic novel retelling. This book handles Beth’s death the best of any of the graphic novel retellings of Little Women that I’ve read.
The graphic novel retellings of Little Women I’ve read largely tend to be for younger readers which is great, and I love that this novel is reaching new audiences and becoming accessible in a new format, but all of these novels seem to be afraid to contend with Beth’s death. They may give Beth an illness of some sort, like cancer, but often stop at part one of the original text so they don’t have to contend with aging up the characters, marriages, and of course, killing Beth.
Little Fillies doesn’t kill Beth, that would be tricky to handle given the whole framing-device for this graphic novel, but it does write Beth out of the story in an attempt to achieve some sort of parity with the source text. Fluttershy is sent on a beach vacation which allows the other characters to grieve her absence and allows for fun call-outs to her absence that occasionally flash to Fluttershy just living her best life on the beach while the other ponies develop the story. See an example or two below (Ignore my low quality photos of the graphic novel pages).
This Little Women retelling is definitely not going to be for everyone, but if you’re looking for something that truly feels like it stands out as unique in a larger swath of Little Women retellings, I would fully recommend this, especially since at under 100 pages it’s a pretty quick read. And definitely a must-give for the My Little Pony fan in your life.
If you know of any Little Women retellings that I’m missing and should cover on my blog, send them my way!
Bookishly Bright 